Why I write: Sheryl Sandberg

When Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg started talking about why the world is run by men, she struck a deep chord with women – and knew she had to write a book

10 November 2015

A lot of people told me that you can't actually be a serious business exec and advocate for women at the same. You have to pick. But I wanted to try to do both. I did this TED talk called 'Why we have too few women leaders' and I started getting emails from mothers from all over the world.

I got one from a woman who hadn't had a raise in years and went in and got a raise. I got one from a woman who was a stay-at-home mom living in a very low-income district, who wanted a better teacher for her child. She saw my TED talk, insisted on meeting with the principal and got a better teacher for her child.

So one of the reasons I wrote my book is that I became convinced by all of these letters coming in that these messages were resonating with women in all kinds of different circumstances.

How to change the world

I write about equality because, no matter how much progress women have made, the world is still overwhelmingly run by men. Men run every industry and every government in every country in the world. That means that when the decisions are made that most impact our world, women's voices aren't equally heard.

That's true in the corporate boardroom, it's true at the PTA meeting, it's true at the town hall and so I wrote Lean In to try to address the issue. To talk openly about the stagnation women are facing at the top and just to give practical advice to both women and men who want to do their part to change it.